Gelling wasn't brought in particularly as Carmont's replacement though was he? he just as much as Hughes is very much a work in progress. I actually think he's doing pretty well considering. He must be impressing more than Gelling is in the reserves to be keeping his spot.

First of all I'd like to state that not only did we beat Catalan Dragons, but we beat Richard Silverwood as well. Talk about one set of rules for one team.

The entire match was a real grind, in no uncertain terms due the tactics employed by Catalan. To say they were niggly would be an understatement. The fact that for the majority of the match the likes of Hock and Lauaki didn't react, went a long way to us winning that game. The first half was a real arm wrestle, yet we should have come away from it with a lead, and healthy one at that.

The second half was much improved. The fact that we scored first despite the best efforts of Silverwood say's a lot. I've come away from the game greatly buoyed by the teams mental strength and concentration levels. A couple of years ago we'd have buckled in a game like that.

An all round damn good team performance. I'm particularly pleased for Ben Flower, he really looks to be settling in and finding his feet. Our own, albeit probably never as good, Paul Gallen IMO.

As for the criticism of Hughes. I'm much rather he was as safe as houses in defense, which he is. Than it be the other way round, and he be responsible for leaking in try's left, right and . His attack will come with time. The fact that we're the leading points scorers without our best centre playing is an encouraging fact.

I always pop on to see how he is progressing I really rate him and glad he is doing well for you, he was never used correctly by Agar!! and if you check his stats for last season his silly penalties were folklore he hardly gives penalties away!

Some fans like to make "facts" up that others latch on to and continually spout them. The Lauaki one is obviously one of them. Or they take a one-off bad performance and use that as a representative overall judgement of that player. Wigan's most common one off other team's fans is that Sam can't defend.

Good, solid performance, I also didn't expect to beat Catalan by 4 scores, their only excellent piece of play for me was the first score for them.

Silverwood was inconsistent, Wigan "stole" the ball, penalty given......same situation, Wigan "knock on", scrum given.....without the referee apparently seeing the offence, unless there was a word in his ear?

As always, room for improvement.

People see what they want to see, Sam is a good defender if my memory serves me right his stats were good last season.
TBF though Hame was not always effective for us (Agar was a complete tool), however there were glimpses to understand his potential, the best game I saw him play in was an International he has good hands and if you get him running onto a ball he will make some good yards. Just mentioned on our board about the time I met him (real nice bloke, softly spoken but huge!) it was snowing and he had flip flops on

It did the season before.

Yeah but you were also the "Play offs biggest bottlers".... and that counted for a lot

And quite a few seasons before that.

It would take a brave man indeed to gamble that not being the best defensive side in the league or the best attacking side could still win you the title.

Silverwood had an absolute shocker. As did his touch judges. Not a good day for the officials. Wigan won comfortably in the end but due to refereeing errors the game was a contest for far longer than it would otherwise have been.

Is it just me or does he seem to lose concentration and guess at decisions? When the ball comes free in a tackle he doesn't seem to have a clue. When he's on form he's the best ref in this country but I thought he was awful today, particularly 1st half.

With the best will in the world, when he looks at the video he's going to be embarrassed, surely? He missed so many things and made so many mistakes, it really wasn't good. At all.

As usual though the ref get very little assistance from the touch judges. You would think that if the referee were having an obvious off day the touch judges would try a little bit harder to help the ref.

+1

I thought our poor ball control combined with Silverwood's whistle-happy performance prolonged the contest. Shame really, I was looking forward to this game regardless of the result, and felt it was a stop-start affair. After Alibert and Thaler's incompetent performance on sky on saturday, I do despair about the style of refereeing in the competition. It's pedantic, inconsistent, and generally speaking, the performance of the referee has too much influence on the game.